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Chicken Croquettes

A fried roll of cold boiled chicken mixed with butter, flour, milk, and seasonings, coated in cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a hot saucepan, rub together the butter and flour.

  2. Slowly add the milk, stirring until thickened.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the chopped chicken, seasoning with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  4. Add optional ingredients like onion juice, celery salt, parsley, mushrooms, or calf's brains if desired.

Shape and coat

  1. Once the mixture is cold, take a large tablespoon of it and form into rolls using cracker crumbs.

  2. Dip each roll in the beaten egg, then roll in crumbs again.

Fry

  1. Fry in deep hot fat or lard until golden brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Nutmeg + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the main body and bulk of the croquette filling.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a sauce that binds the chicken together.
Milk
Provides the liquid that turns the flour and butter into a creamy, moist binding sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that cooks with the flour into a smooth base.
Beaten egg
Acts as a sticky layer that helps the cracker crumbs adhere to the rolls.

The step that matters

Chill the mixture until cold before shaping. A warm filling is soft and sticky, so the rolls lose their shape and can burst or fall apart in the hot fat. Cooling lets the starch-thickened sauce firm up enough to hold a shape.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, flour, milk, pepper, nutmeg, celery):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, milk, pepper, nutmeg, celery. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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